SciOut18 Flash Talk: Caitlin Weber
https://rockedu.rockefeller.edu/new_outreach/flash-talk-caitlin-weber/

Thank you! I'm the program manager for the STEM Ambassador Program which is a research and public engagement program directed by Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, funded by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Utah. I'm gonna give an overview of the training that we've developed in our outcomes from our first two years of the program. So I'll start by just saying the public generally has a high opinion of science science as a profession and this there's a view that scientists are making a valuable contribution to society. So scientists are in a good position to address the challenge of expanding the reach of public engagement activities; however, they need training to identify appropriate audiences and venue for engagement and in going beyond solely transmitting science not knowledge content to instead facilitate a dialogue. So our research team created STEM app to build relationships for open-minded exchange between the public and scientists. We provide engagement to science or engagement training to scientists we refer to as STEM ambassadors. These are scientists who are seeking to engage with the public outside of traditional venues. That is outside of museums, schools, and science centers and this enables them to connect with people who might not engage with science in traditional ways. So we present the scientist with several ambassador goals to add several ambassador objectives to achieve this overarching STEM app goal of facilitating open-minded exchange. These objectives include demonstrating shared values with members of the public, revealing that scientists have identities outside of science that are respectful of the identities of others, showing that the scientific community cares about the public's well-being, demonstrating a desire to learn from and with others, and increasing the accessibility of scientists to the public and the public to scientists. So we don't emphasize the objective of improving science literacy. We found that many scientists enter the program with a desire to fulfill this objective already so we don't discourage this but we challenge the scientists to achieve one of these other ambassador objectives in addition to any knowledge-based objectives. So self-identity values and our connection to others influences how we receive and contextualize information. So in a recent paper Julie Risien and Martin Storksdieck proposed that scientists can integrate the many components of their identity as a hobbyist, researcher, parent, and so on to develop an impact identity which will guide them in doing engagement activities that they find fulfilling and rewarding. So STEM app draws on a scientists impact identity to establish an authentic connection with what we call a focal group or a group gathered around a shared interest, experience, characteristic, or circumstance that resonates with the scientist. So for example we worked with an urban planner who's studying water use in landscaping and one facet of her impact identity was her passion to connect with people who face physical barriers to participating in science in science. She was also really interested in engaging those who were involved in landscaping because she's her research is concerned with outdoor water use and landscaping practices. So she identified inmates in a horticultural career training program at a county jail as a focal group who might share an interest in water use and water wise landscaping practices but who faced physical barriers to participating in science and so she ultimately partnered with the jail's horticulture program to offer a water-wise landscaping class to the inmates. We found that scientists can draw on their impact identity to access a huge diversity of audiences and venues including adult and youth correctional facilities, senior centers, cafes, Housing Authority developments, and rock climbing walls. Because the ambassadors go to so many different places we found that there was a need to develop our training in such a way that we were imparting generalizable skills that can be applied to create targeted programs for each focal group. So rather than provide communication training specific to each group which logistically would have been really difficult we trained the scientists to conduct what we call an immersion visit. So scientists visit the the focal group venue, they talk with group representatives, they take notes on the format and layout of the venue, the shared values or experiences of the group, and how the group communicates so this is really bringing in that kind of code design element. This visit really serves to explore the connection the Ambassador identified when developing his or her impact identity and it also serves to inform the design of their engagement event. So after the the scientist completes their immersion visit, they apply a design thinking process which is a process that's traditionally applied by designers to take a user-centered approach to developing innovative solutions. So scientists use this design thinking process to transform their immersion notes into an engagement activity that's targeted to the focal group they plan to work with. They use the notes from their immersion to develop a guiding statement that summarizes their observations and their objectives and then they then use this statement to brainstorm communication strategies and engagement activities that are specific to the focal group. We then provide science communication training which is derived from the portal to the public program to help the scientists facilitate their engagement activity. The activities take many different forms and are specific to the focal group. They often overlap with pre-existing gatherings in the group venue which allows the scientists to engage with people who might not frequent informal science learning venues or make a deliberate effort to go to a science themed event. So I'll give a couple examples of what some of these look like. We had a biologist in our program who has several science themed tattoos and she facilitated a tattoo event at a local coffee shop that was located right next door to a tattoo parlor. She invited a tattoo artist from the neighboring tattoo parlor to come over and participate in the event and codesign the event with her so they were there to share their designs and she was there to share the science tattoos that she and her colleagues in the biology department have. And so in doing so she was able to reveal that scientists have an interest in identity outside of science that is this shared interest in tattoos. We worked with an oncologist who studies the cancer genome. She engaged with electricians. She described the techniques that she uses to understand biological circuits and map the cancer genome and then she invited the electrician's to share the tools that they use to map complex electrical systems. So this really gave her a fresh new way of thinking about her research and demonstrated that scientists are willing to learn from others. We also worked with an atmospheric scientist who was studying air quality. He attended a children's festival that was hosted by a community center serving a low-income area. He presented a hands-on activity and shared his work to address Salt Lake's air quality problem and in doing so was you know demonstrating that scientists are working on relevant community issues and care about the community's well-being. So since we began in 2016 we've trained 46 scientists who have engaged roughly nineteen hundred people through over a hundred different engagement events in 40 unique venues. The majority of our trainings were through an in-person workshop series, so 4 workshops occurring over several weeks and then we worked with the scientists to actually facilitate their engagement activity and we're now exploring an online format with a cohort of eight scientists who were scattered around the country and institutions outside of the University of Utah. Our participant response has generally been positive. Over 90% of the participants felt the scientist did a good job communicating and tried to make the interaction positive and survey and interview data from our first two cohorts have revealed that the scientists are finding their participation in the program to be valuable as well. We observed an increase in self assess science communication confidence and ambassadors also indicated that their participation in the program has piqued their interest in engaging with new groups in the future. So we're finding that the process of developing one's impact identity has helped the ambassadors to realize new engagement venues and opportunities. Many scientists, 71% of the scientists that entered our program, identified opportunities a lack of opportunities and a lack of venues as a barrier to their participation in public engagement. We saw this go down to 29 percent upon completion of the training. So to summarize we've had success in guiding scientists and developing their impact identity and this has been a collaborative effort of Nalini Nadkarni at the University of Utah, Shelly Goldman at Stanford University, Dennis Schatz at the Pacific Science Center, Sue Allen at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, and Becky Menlove at the Natural History Museum of Utah. We are also working with an external evaluator at Inverness Research and we're now really working to explore strategies to sustain and scale up this program. So I look forward to sharing ideas with all of you throughout the meeting and learning how others have approached this challenge. Thanks! There we go. I'm curious have you had any scientists where it was hard to find their impact identity or where you had to work a lot to figure out what that group would be? Yes, so we started by doing one-on-one interviews with the scientists to come up with their impact identity and initially we really didn't have a set framework for these interviews and so for some scientists they would come in and say well I'm studying such an obscure thing, I don't know who would be interested in this or how I can connect and so what we started doing was really breaking down the key elements of who the scientist is and what they do. So we we developed an exercise where we asked them a series of interview questions and then have them generate these sticky notes with key words related to their responses to the questions and so the sticky notes can include the scientist's hobby, you know maybe they're a skier, a mountain biker, and then also their research for their microbiologist or physicist and then we look at all of these keywords together and use those two to brainstorm potential connections. And now that we've developed that exercise and now that we have a few examples of what previous scientists have done so we're creating kind of a database on our website of what different biologists have done, what different physicists have done, we found that that process is becoming a little bit easier Okay so your program sounds super awesome! You mentioned scaling up. Is this the kind of thing that you would want to be available like for free for other scientists in other parts of the country or just at your university. Now so we're really interested in reaching scientists in other parts of the country. We've been piloting an online format which is consisting right now of a series of webinars and trainings for scientists. We are finding though that there's a really valuable in-person component to the program so we're playing around with some ideas right now of how might you know work with scientists remotely but still provide them with that in-person support or mentorship. But yeah we're looking to engage with scientists around the country.